The bottom line here is that EP values are currently not what they once were. Back in the olden days we were able to state this is the EP values for T1, T2 etc. Even up to T6 gear we were able to give fairly sensible static values for EP so it was dead easy to compare gear you simply multiplied up the stats and compared two EP totals.

Then came WotLK and haste effects. Over the last year it has become painfully apparent that we cannot give a fixed set of EP values and hence the oft repeated mantra "You have to sim it for yourself". EP values were removed from the TTT and the mantra firmly took its place. Yet still people clinged to the notion that they could simply multiply up the stats to compare two items. Worse still people still cling to the ooohh stat X has > 2 EP I better "stack" that stat. This usually led to wild re-gemming/re-enchanting for the new stat costing hundreds of gold, often with disappointing results.

Now we are gradually coming to the realisation that doing any form of EP value stat comparison is really quite a bad idea given the current volatility of haste etc. The biggest issue is that the amount of effort it takes to work out how best to set up your gear. To setup the sim for multiple runs takes a lot of calculation. Doing this manually is a pain as it takes ages to switch around even a gem or two and re-run the results, Rawr's export helps of course and takes the tedium out of it and reduces the opportunity for errors to slip in. The other option is Rawr's optimiser and this is amazing, the issue is that the underlying calculations are decent but not as sound or as thorough as EnhSim.

So what to do? Personally I've given up entirely on using EP values. What I do is to use Rawr to predict optimisation of current gear and then CHECK the suggestion using Export to EnhSim. The ability of Rawr to hone in on a best setup is wonderful, if only EnhSim could have this feature or I could get Rawr to make a call to EnhSim as a dll so that its optimiaser was using EnhSim to calc the dps.

Perhaps this is a longer term goal? Add an option to EnhSim for a direct API call and provide a EnhSim.dll compiled from the current code. Then in Rawr I could add an option that the optimiser would make an API call with the config it wanted to test. The big issue is that it would take upwards of several hours to run. Rawr's optimiser runs several thousand possible combos of gear to find an optimal set. Running the sim a few thousand times even with a low 1000h config is going to take ages.

I probably wasn't clear but that's exactly what I was getting at. By setting your EP step to 30 (the default) you are adding what are probably 20 high value haste points followed by 10 lower value haste points which average out to the EP you saw. Basically, you are taking the EP you get from adding 30 haste and apply that EP to a 20 haste increase and expecting that EP to bear out (which it does not). There are some graphs around that show how quickly haste goes through peaks and valleys.

Also, you have to understand EP is derived from DPS so saying the "DPS value of haste is high, even though the ep is low" makes absolutely no sense. I showed a while back that there is nothing wrong with the DPS calculations brought forth using the Calculate EP Button. It was giving the same DPS on the base and EP stat calcs as it would if I manually added those stats and did a normal sim.

If Astrylian the Rawr creator had his way the EP values tab would completely disappear, unfortunately he doesn't get rid of it because of the wailing and gnashing of teeth he fears from users if he did.

If you assume that the EP values display doesn't exist at all in Rawr you are going to get dramatically better results than if you even glance at it. Bottom line NEVER EVER use Rawr for EP values. EP values are crap at the best of times Rawr ones I never look at and would advise you do the same. Note the massive red disclaimer text saying DON'T rely on this.

If you really really really can't do without the crutch of EP values and you simply must delude yourself that they are meaningful then stick to EnhSim's EP values results.

Your gearing would be significantly better if you just ran EnhSim to get DPS results and ignored EP values as a quaint relic of past times.


Rawr's Optimiser

Perhaps its worth clearing up how this works. What Rawr does for ANY gear setup is to run through a full set of calculations, eg: amount of hit,miss etc for white dmg, yellow dmg, spells etc. crit rates, talent effects proc chances etc. At the core of the code is effectively a routine that takes a set of Stats and returns a dps value. The set of stats is made up of the gear + gems + enchants + buffs.

Now the graphs you see in Rawr - eg: showing the head slot items. What it does is get a Stats object with your current gear, gems etc and assumes your head slot is empty. It calls the dps routine and gets a value. This is the base value with that slot empty. It then looks at all the head slot items with relevant stats (ie: AP, hit, crit, Agi etc and ignores things like spirit) and it generates a new Stats object for your gear + the item. It runs the dps routine and gets a new value. Subtracting base value from the new value gets a dps figure for that new item. THIS is the number you see in the chart.

It does this for every item in your item cache. So if you see 40 items in the head slot chart it ran the sim 41 times. A base calc + 40 sims one for each item. This is surprising to most people as its really quite fast.

The optimiser works in exactly the same way. You mark the items, gems, enchants etc that you have available (in bags/bank/known skills etc) anything that you want to swap around to possibly improve your current setup. It does a base calc first, then tries lots of different combos of gear. Each and every combo it tries it does a FULL sim of and gets back a dps figure. The calculation is the same its just different gear its trying.

It works on the basis of honing in on what combo of gear is giving the best result. Each time it changes something its trying to get closer and closer to an optimum set from what is available. This often means it does a few thousand runs of the sim from start to finish. Each one on a slightly different setup each one generating a new dps figure. When its done it presents the result.


Now at present there seems to be a bug that at certain points suddenly makes hit seem to be the stat that gives higher dps. I suspect this is to do with a rounding error but as yet I haven't found the issue. The point is when its found the optimiser will still do exactly what it did in the past. ie: run the sim thousands of times. It will still pick the gear with the highest dps. Its just that the gear it uses will not have the bug with hit.

Note that NOTHING in this process involved EP values at any stage. RAWR DOES NOT USE EP VALUES AT ALL. In fact neither does EnhSim.

I think you are deluding yourself. Again. This EP bashing happens with a couple of months between. It's getting really old.

EP isn't magic numbers that solves your DPS and gearing issues instantly. It's not silly digits drawn randomly from a hat to delude people into thinking "stat X gud" either. EP is stat weighing based on DPS gains by introducing more of said stat. And that's it. Any added problems due to this, like removing another stat, reaching a soft/hard cap, diminishing returns and whatnot, are problems outside of actual EP. Yes, it's too bad that gear doesn't come as stat X+5% as EP would be a lot easier but that's just not how itemization is. Yes, it's far better to calculate individual sets and see how that affects your personal DPS. Yes, EP just shows trends in stat weighing. But this is known factors for a lot of us. We know of EP's limitations and keep them in mind when working with EP. So for all that do this, you propose removing the only source of looking at all gear to see trends in upgrade paths, just to get what? Shots in the dark with Rawr exports into EnhSim? Rawr has to use something to weigh gear and EnhSim takes too long to individually calculate sets.

Warning newbes is fine. Explaining the shortcomings of EP to people that don't understanding it is fine. Spreading FUD about EP is not fine.

Please don't take bits out of context like that. It looks like I'm implying that Rawr uses EP or something like it with your comment.

I understand the fundamentals of Rawr. It's a solid tool of those specs that are fully supported. We both know this isn't happening with enhance anytime soon. Your approach to a hybrid (pun not intended) solution with Rawr and EnhSim looks really good and is a step up from basic EnhSim. I really mean that.

What grinds my gears is that EP is blamed for ignorant and/or stupid people. I know that 90+% of all EP discussions are simply a waste of time as the person asking them should stay the fuck away from EP all together. I'm just not happy losing this tool because of said people.

An example of how EP is pretty nifty compared to raw DPS comparisons:

You progress through tier X and gain the usual stats, little to no haste. EP is a,b,c, etc. You enter tier X+1 and gain some more of the usual stats and some haste. EP suddenly change and give haste a new value of, say, 1.8 EP up from 1.1. In your Rawr gear comparison window, you don't see this. Your gems may still be hit for yellow and your gear is a mix of most beneficial stats. You're not aware that haste is potentially up to take over AP in pure DPS. You'll still find the BiS gear by Rawr/EnhSim if your checklist is long enough, so that's not the problem. But you've lost the ability to see the stat trend. The next run you do may change all your gems to haste and you never saw it coming.

In your example what you would see is in Rawr it suddenly re-optimising your gear for haste. It sounds like you haven't really used Rawr all that much. Its primary benefit is in the optimiser which looks at thousands of possible combos of items/gems/enchants etc you mark as available and works out the highest dps combo. This is an amazingly good part of the program. Even if you didn't run the optimiser all the graphs would show gemmings suggesting higher dps from haste. This works only if you have turned on show gemming combos.

It also sounds like you haven't used it much lately its come on leaps and bounds in the last month or so and gives pretty damned good results at present. There is always issues of course - the same is true of EnhSim (just look at its issue tracker), however I do my best to solve these as and when people point them out. The sanity check of exporting data to EnhSim is of course something I'd expect every elitist jerk reader to be doing and not just relying on Rawr's closed solution methodology.

I'd agree that we shouldn't entirely abandon EP values. However I'd like to see a re-focusing of attention away from them towards iterative solutions and graphing. The new graph features added to Enhsim should help this. The aim is to find any local maximums/minimums that might exist with stats close to what you currently have equipped. This would then give a visual representation that by changing stats from X to Y you would get a dps increase.

I totally agree we should have a means of seeing where small changes to gear might give decent returns, EP values have too much baggage for this in my view and so alternatives should be found. This does NOT mean dropping the idea all together is what I am after. I suspect you are taking my antipathy to the way people treat EP values (note not the values themselves) as meaning I want no method of indicating what direction to take to improve our gear. This isn't true.

Levva - You mentioned a graphing feature within Enhsim, but this is the first I have seem mention of this. Is this in a dev version that has not been released to the general public? I was unable to locate any tickets or description of this on the codeplex site.

I have seen Lightning Bolt crits over 11k and my Windfury crits, even with both hits critting, have yet to reach that point. Also noteworthy is that because Windfury has an internal cool down of 3 seconds (not 100% confirmed, but it is believed to be somewhere in that range) it in essence places a cool down on the windfury glyph.

While all shocks have cool downs, Flame Shock has a dot time of 18 seconds, so even while on cool down it still doing damage, and allows you to use Earth shock and Maelstrom Weapon charges for Lightning Bolt.

What i was REALLY saying is the comparison of which glyph is going to be better will be based off your Melee Crit chance VS your Spell Crit Chance, raid buffed. Low spell crit means the dot ticks will have less of a chance to crit, thus the value of this glyph will be lower. I'm not mentioning your melee crit here because more than likely it will be quite high most of the time during raids.

In testing of this glyph, I have found it to provide me a DPS increase in 25 mans, where i have a more raid buffs, and not as much in 10 mans. Still have to do more testing of course but this is just what I have found so far.

PS: Please pardon grammer and spelling ive been awake for all of 10 minutes now.

I think abandoning EP values over more sophisticated ways to calculate upgrades in gear seems a bit trivial. I mean, item upgrade choices usually dont have many options on what we want anyway. Let's say you have Belt of Dragons and the 245 level belt dropped (belt of Deathly dominion). You are going to take it because the stat difference is massive (so its surely an upgrade even if minimal) and there isnt really any other choice. So if you actually did a pretty intelligent theorycrafting you are pidgeon-holed in a single item and your calculations didn't provide any real results.

About gemming, we have around 12-14 gem slots average. Lets say the educated person used his real calculations and found out that he should gem with some stat that in reality has for example 2.1EP. Another person uses Enhsim EP values that are quite false, so while thinking he is gemming with for example a 2.1EP stat, in reality it has a pretty low 1.6EP.

The first player is gaining 504-588 real EP. The second player because of his ignorance will be gaining 384- 448 EP. The average EP bonus the first player will gain through his hard work is around 130EP, which equals usually to about 1% more DPS. This difference wont even show up in real raid encounters, and this is the maximum that can exist (2.1EP vs 1.6EP is pretty huge).

It seems to me that this game isn't punishing enough people for not being educated and not knowing what they are doing, or looking it on the other side of the coin, it isn't rewarding players very much that actually want to search things a bit more.

Maybe we should just stay with the EP values and focus more on DPS priorities and cycles, where some real difference can be made. But of course it all depends on how much time and thought someone is prepared to invest compared to the results he is getting.

I'd disagree a bit here. The 245 Deathly Dominion is, if your EP values are similar to mine, a very very small DPS upgrade (whereas the 258 is BiS and a significant upgrade). Knowing this at a glance, and that say a hunter in your guild gets far more from it, would be a benefit to your guild (and therefore to you) by being a much larger raid DPS upgrade from his belt of dragons. If we really wanted to just say "this is new and from a higher tier of content, it must be an upgrade, /roll", then we wouldn't be discussing it here and spending time trying to understand our own gearing through the sim.

What Levva said here is the most annoying thing I have found with the RAWR Optimizer at the moment. Constantly, placing hit with values 600+. The method I have used has been to use RAWR get something that feels 'right', export it to EnhSim and check it out. Quick, easy and without exception has with each addition to gear or change in tier sets, translated into improved dps. An understanding of the 'differnt' types of boss fights (movement, static, etc) means I may swap to a haste build or go more with an AP/Crit build. But the great thing about RAWR it gives you the opportunity do 'what if's' quickly.

I stopped using EP values at the start of Ulduar, largely because I started using RAWR. It just simplified the whole gear decison making process for me. However, with this inflated Hit value I am getting at the moment I am having real difficulties being half way sure as to which way to go at the moment from a gemming point of view. I took the [Cudgel of the Damned] (haven't seen the Axe yet) and now I am trying to work out wether to use it in my OH over [Caress of Insanity] But I simply do not trust the inflated hit at the moment. On some optimise runs I am getting Caress as the choice on others the Cudgel but either way inflated hit.

I have often tried explaining to guildies the complexity of working out what is and what is not an upgrade for an Enhancement Shaman and how it seems changing one piece of gear can mean a large regemming excerise.

It would be interesting if anyone would like to armory my profile to see what they get in RAWR because after literally hundreds of RAWR and sim runs over the last two weeks I am spending longer in the sim and RAWR than I am in Ulduar and ToGC put together. This seems some what ironic.